Writing:
For the past year, I made writing a daily habit, a bit like exercising the body, and developing the mind. It’s a process that I follow each morning; recording ideas, editing, and refining. This blog is my sandbox, a place to practice – in safety – without judgment. The blog holds me accountable, as I made the public intention of publishing a post – for better or worse – every Monday. The question remains, do I find a voice, do I find an original thought, do I write something worth reading, worth sharing with others. Or am I wasting my time.
I often enjoy reading travel books, given my penchant for travel. Travel tends to reveal the same lessons; patience, humility, and gratitude. Pico Iyer, an essayist and novelist who used to write for Time magazine, waxes philosophically, about his lifetime of world travels, and his meetings with the Dalai Lama. Paul Theroux joined the Peace Corps after university; he shares with the reader, his many journeys around the world, often by train, and if not by train, than slow, deliberate, taxing ground travel. Other travel books exist; some write about foreigners in a derogatory manner, for which, nothing is gained. Others write with no insight, no lessons learned, no wisdom; simply an accounting of going from one location to another, as if reading a train schedule.
I have long enjoyed the writing of Raymond Carver, an American author and poet, who championed, and revitalized the short story format in the 1980s. My twin brother, Brett, gave me a collection of short stories by Carver, before I was transferred to Japan, while serving in the Marine Corps. I sometimes wonder if my fondness for the short story genre, is due to my limited intellect, my limited ability to read or follow longer literary works.
Writing for me is rarely sequential, but rather, an iterative process. I try to write everything down in a notebook, and to write without critique or judgement. I’m not attached to anything that I write down; I don’t “own” anything that I write down. I may choose to refine these ideas later; I may choose to delete these ideas later. If I’m walking or driving, I may use my iPhone voice recorder to get these ideas out of my head, and will later transcribe into a notebook. I often keep a small notepad beside my bed table, in case I can’t sleep, or, if I wake up inspired in the middle of the night. My ideas are never as crisp, if I wait until morning, to record the ideas.
I lack the skill or ability to cram, and “crank” out a post the night before. I never had this ability in school, or professionally; and I don’t have this ability today, either. Often times, I have to look ahead at the themes scheduled in the up-coming weeks; sometimes thoughts and ideas come about in a circuitous manner. It’s possible to have a moment of insight while shaving my face; I’ll accept brilliant insights whenever and wherever I may find.
Advice:
Advice is cheap; everyone has an opinion; below, I share advice that resonates with me.
English author, Neil Gaiman, shared advice with graduates from University of the Arts, in May 2012. He sets out writing time each day, and during this time, he may write, or do nothing. If he doesn’t write, he can’t play with his iPhone, he can’t surf the internet, he can’t clean his office. Write, or don’t write, stare out the window, but always his choice.
He shared that whenever he made the decision to “write for money” is when he often failed, because the writing failed to satisfy his needs as a writer, and the writing failed to satisfy the needs of the audience. Sometimes, the only benefit of writing was the money; other times, the money evaporated, too. Gaiman’s advice is, don’t write for money, but rather, write for oneself, and make good art.
He also suggested that goals or milestones are often like mountains, and periodically, there is value to asking the question, am I getting closer to, or farther away from, the mountain (goal); am I making progress (or not), towards my goals, towards climbing these mountains.
Anne Lamott, is an American novelist and non-fiction writer; she’s a recovering alcoholic, and I’ve enjoyed reading many of her books, many of which, revolve around damaged people. Lamott suggests that writers embrace “shitty first drafts” suggesting that very few writers, if any, write great material the very first time, as if, inspired by a heavenly being. Lamott suggests three steps to the writing process:
- just write everything down, get it out of your head, don’t judge, criticize, or edit
- begin editing what you wrote down in step one
- continue to refine your writing
American horror story author, Stephen King, suggests that for someone to be a good writer, s/he must be a voracious reader. I didn’t become a voracious reader until I was an adult – often reading one book per week. I make it a habit to write down and look up words that I don’t recognize or understand; if nothing else, the exercise expands my vocabulary (for example, please use the word “flummox” in a sentence: the traveler was flummoxed by the border agent’s questions while passing through customs).
Traveling:
Writing while traveling is challenging; not impossible, but challenging. Sometimes, the most productive thing that I may do, is to write at the unnatural time of 4:00am after I wake up, and before I hit the road. Alternatively, if I stop driving by mid-day, and find a local library with WiFi access, I might still write effectively. A full day of driving however, 500-miles, is exhausting. Sometimes, all that I may do at this point, let’s say 3:00pm, is simply transfer ideas from my iPhone voice recorder to paper, but often, lack the energy or attention to develop or edit ideas.
The other challenge is a migraine headache; a full-on migraine may leave me flat in bed for one or two days, which means no writing or editing. Publishing a post on a weekly basis is challenging when I lose 25% of my work days, and it puts a lot of pressure on the remaining week to clean up a post before it’s published on Monday morning.
Other thoughts:
This post is number forty-four; by the end of August 2022, I will have written fifty-two weekly blog posts. After Labor Day, my intention is to write just two blog posts per month, so one new post every other week, instead of every week. My intention is to write with less mundane description, and to write with more insight, to develop more thoughtful threads. Often times, I will delete a thread or idea, if I can’t fully develop in a clear manner, before publishing a post. It’s difficult for me to do this on a weekly basis; it’s difficult to do this traveling every day. One of the habits that I enjoyed in Mexico, was just sitting down with a cup of coffee, and to do nothing else, allowing time and space for the mind to wander.
garthmonroe 